White House

Final appropriations legislation enacted today provides steady or increased funding to research programs at science agencies that have been operating on stopgap spending from the outset of fiscal year 2019.

The Trump administration’s new Missile Defense Review argues there is a pressing need to develop and test a variety of advanced anti-missile technologies to respond to an increasing range of international threats. Administration officials indicate they plan to press ahead with a network of space-based sensors for detecting enemy missiles as well as explore more unproven systems such as space-based interceptors.

The enactment of the National Quantum Initiative Act on Dec. 21 creates a multiagency program spanning the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation, and Department of Energy. As part of the initiative, NSF and DOE will each establish between two and five competitively awarded research centers.

At the top of the agenda for the new Congress is to negotiate an end to the current partial government shutdown, which has largely shuttered several federal science agencies.

The Trump administration has released the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which details current and potential climate change impacts on the U.S. While the report considers a range of scenarios, the administration has asserted it relies on an “extreme” scenario based on overly pessimistic assumptions.

The National Science and Technology Council published a report this month outlining goals for ocean science and technology through 2028. It identifies modernizing research infrastructure and improving coupled ocean-coastal-hydrology models as high priorities.

NASA’s renewed efforts to build a sustained human presence on and around the Moon have spurred plans to integrate lunar research with exploration and commercial activity. Meanwhile, international rivalries have prompted the Defense Department to reform its space activities, while that same competition puts pressure on NASA to pursue a more direct path to the lunar surface.

President Trump has made five new appointments to the National Science Board, the governing board of the National Science Foundation. He has also renewed the terms of Geraldine Richmond and former Board Chair Maria Zuber.

A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlines the difficult path to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Trump administration has neither rejected nor embraced the report, consistent with its generally ambivalent posture toward climate science.

European funders are forcing the issue on open-access publishing, while the Trump administration reviews U.S. policies on disseminating federally sponsored research.